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A Poppy Garden 


By EMILY MALBONE MORGAN 


AUTHOR OF 

“A Little White Shadow.” 


" Wherever men are noble they love bright color ; and wherever 
they can live healthily, bright color is given them in sky, sea, flow- 
ers, and living creatures !" — Ruskin. 



HARTFORD : 

Belknap & Warfield, 
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Published in behalf of 
“ Heartsease;” 

A Summer Home for Working Girls. 
Reprinted in part from “ Far a. 7 id Near 


Copyright by E. M. M., 1892. 0 


To E. M. M., R. M. B. 

AND F. H. J. 

In remembrance of part of the summer of i8gi 
spent near 
A Poppy Garden. 






































































































r 





































































































































































NOTE. 


Knowing that, if it finds its way nowhere else, 
this small book will, sooner or later, find its way 
back to the village of Poppy Gardens, the writer 
would here disclaim having drawn her characters 
from any of its inhabitants, living or dead. Grate- 
fully has she placed the scene of this humble 
romance in one of its gardens, and among the 
mountains which brought to her renewed health 
and strength; but the permanent dwellers in the 
real Lanford will recognize how greatly she has 
mingled fiction with fact. She would also acknowl- 
edge her obligation for two short poems used in 
this story to a small Christmas booklet issued by 
Raphael Tuck and Company, of London, written 
by Miss Edith Snowden; and some ideas, in the 
way of a motto, etc., borrowed from an English 
song called “The Garden of Sleep.” 













































4 




A POPPY GARDEN. 


Miss Lucinda Hardhack lived in an old red 
house, which could be seen on the summit of the 
hill as one turned the corner of North Street, after 
passing the meeting-house. Summer and winter 
she had lived there for over fifty years. The lilac- 
bushes by the front door, the tiger-lillies growing 
in unkempt tangles down by the stone-wall, the 
tall hollyhocks in the garden, the sunflowers grow- 
ing by the well — all seemed of fifty years growth 
or longer, though they blossomed every summer 
and seemed to die every autumn, while Miss Lu- 
cinda had ceased to blossom with springtime and 
only hybernated in winter. 

There is a strong, almost fierce sense of posses- 
sion in living over fifty years in a house which 
is associated with one’s earliest recollections, and 
Miss Hardhack had this sense to a very great de- 
gree; she would have fought a battle royal for that 
possession any time. She would rather have starved 
there than to have lived luxuriously anywhere else. 


8 


A Poppy Garden . 


One by one across the threshold of the old house, 
and down the hillside to the country grave-yard, 
had been carried all those who had made home to 
her and all she loved. They had passed away in- 
to silence, leaving her with that peculiar feeling of 
being empty handed and empty hearted, which 
comes to women often past middle age. 

The lilacs went on blossoming each May, the 
tiger-lillies nodded over the wall, the sunflowers 
turned towards their lord, the sun, through succes- 
sive summers; she fitted more and more into the 
old red house like a snail into its shell. The bur- 
den of years was coming upon her, and she felt 
their weight of loneliness and wondered when the 
end would come. Outwardly she was cheerful; 
she conscientiously gave herself little moral pinches 
when the future looked darkest, and took her part 
in sewing societies, and in working actively for the 
unconverted heathen, who believing themselves 
creatures of a day enjoyed life thoroughly and 
never bothered about their final end. She never 
missed church on Sundays, and even struggled 
forth with a lantern down the dusky hillside to 
prayer meeting, on Thursday nights, in the school- 
house at the foot of the hill. People on North 
Street sometimes set their watches by Miss Lu- 


A Poppy Garden. 


9 


cinda; clocks stopped, she never did. For com- 
panions she had White Dahlia, her Alderney cow, 
a princess among cows, and Noble, her cat, who 
from long spoiling, spite of his name, had become 
one of the most ignoble and exacting of his race. 
These good creatures however did not make up to 
her for the lack of human companionship. For 
spite of all arguments to the contrary, there is just 
this difference between human and animal compan- 
ions : though you may fight with the former, and 
go to law, or think they were created for your 
special discipline, nevertheless, if you fall sick they 
can come to the rescue, which one’s animal friends, 
with the best intentions, cannot do; they at least 
can appease their own hunger and you don’t have 
to especially send for some one to come and feed 
them, or shake down their beds for them, unless 
they are idiots or infants in arms. Miss Lucinda 
was always thinking of the time when she should 
fall sick, and wondering who would feed Noble and 
take care of Dahlia — she never seemed to think at 
all of who would take care of her. 

One spring after a most tedious winter of drift- 
ing snow storms, impassable roads, sudden thaws, 
and mud as a result up to the hubs of the passing 
wagons and carts, everything seemed to fail her. 


JO 


A Poppy Garden. 


She felt wretchedly, and the dreaded illness seemed 
on the way, so she at last sent for David Hardhack, 
a distant bachelor cousin of hers, to come and take 
care of Dahlia, and plant the vegetable garden. 
H e also had lived alone ; but as far as being handy 
or capable was concerned, he was a host in himself, 
lie was also a great philosopher, and very caustic 
in his humor at times. He had lived in the coun- 
try all his life, consequently he thought all centers 
of civilization, like cities, to be sinks of iniquity, 
to which Sodom and Gomorrah compared favora- 
bly. He and Count Tolstoi would have agreed on 
many points, spite of one being a New England 
farmer, who had sold his farm because it was too 
lonely, and the other a Russian Nobleman, who 
himself farmed his own estates, and could never 
be lonely enough. 

David, like Diogenes, lived, metaphorically 
speaking, in a tub; his thoughts moved in circles 
and always ended by meeting their beginning, yet 
to talk to him you would have thought his life was 
one perpetual Pilgrim’s Progress. The trials of 
Christian were very real to him; so was Daniel in 
the lion’s den, and Johah being swallowed by the 
whale. He read his Bible most literally, and though 
utterly unacquainted with the Roman philosophers 






A Poppy Garden. u 

he sometimes equaled them in epigramatic speech. 
David, when Miss Lucinda met him at the back- 
door the day after she had sent for him, thought 
she had aged a half a century since he had seen 
her last; he saw quite plainly that the lonely win- 
ter had told upon her, and that she needed cheer- 
ing up. Not that slie complained — she was not a 
complaining woman, but her sun seemed already 
going down among dull gray clouds behind a win- 
try horizon. She performed each duty with so 
much of slow conscientious lifelessness — every- 
thing she did seeming an unconscious protest 
against the trouble of doing it; her life was simply 
colorless and set in a colorless atmosphere. 

“ Lucindy,” said David, coming into dinner that 
noon after a morning of hard, brisk work, “ why 
don’t yer go to cultivatin’ somethin’ asides gardin 
sass? All the wominfolks round here hev a bit 
o’ a flower gardin, an’ I hev lots o’ seeds to hum 
I’ve bin collectin’, mostly poppy seed. I’d give 
’em to yer with no askin’, an’ sow ’em for yer, too, 
into the bargin, in that long bare space atween the 
house and the pertater patch.” 

“Who’ll take care of it, David?” asked Miss 
Lucinda, wearily. “ You aint agoin’ to board here 
all summer, be yer, an’ I’ve enough to do, I reckon, 
without botherin’ about flower gardins.” 


12 


A Poppy Garden. 


“ You a Lanford woman askin’ about poppies !” 
said David, contemptuously. “Why, they take 
care o’ ’emselves after you’ve sowed ’em. You’ve 
no need to bother about ’em.” 

“ It isn’t I’m not thankful for your seeds,” said 
Miss Lucinda, more graciously, with a little break 
in her voice. “ Its only that’ I’m about well-nigh 
spent. I’m tired o’ livin’ an’ draggin’ along, 
David.” 

“What you need, Lucindy Hardback, ” said 
David, emphatically, helping himself again to pork 
and potatoes, “ is brightness. Youaint let enough 
sunshine into yourself lately, an’ you ’r jes dyin’ 
acause of it. You ’r jes like the Simpkins’ best 
parler, with the braided hair ornamints in frames, 
an’ the shells from Madegasky round the fireplace, 
an’ Tom Simpkins’ grandmother’s an’ first wife’s 
coffin plates on the mantil-shelf, an’ all shet up 
for fear the sun ’ll spile ’em green rope tidies 
on the chairs, so that whenever its opin it smells 
as mouldy an’ musty as that old receivin’ tomb 
down Longmedder graveyard, as was opened last 
year. You’r growin’ mouldy, too, Lucindy, an’ 
your sperits is gettin’ right down musty.” 

Lucinda felt rebellious. She did not like to be 
compared to the Simpkins’ parlor, or to be told she 


A Poppy Garden. 


*3 

was like a receiving tomb. There is something a 
little irritating about philosophers, and even saints 
at times; even Diogenes in his tub, aud St. Simon 
Stylites on his pillar, both probably had their irri- 
tating and irritated moments. 

“ I a’int bin the one to go behind a cloud,” she 
said doggedly. “ Its the sun itself that ’s gone, if 
yer want to know what’s the matter, and the Lord 
knows I’m not the only woman that its the matter 
with. I’m ded sick o’ workin’ from mornin’ till 
night, jes to put things I don’t relish into my own 
stomach; it might be worth while to cook nice 
things for other folks, it don’t seem worth while 
jes to do it for myself. When I lie down at night 
I’m that tired I’m ready to drop all for workin’ to 
keep a breath o’ life in me that I don’t want to 
keep.” 

Miss Lucinda for the first time in her life shook 
her head like a dowager empress, and flung her 
words out as if she was flinging down a gauntlet 
for some one to pick up if they dared. 

David looked serious. He was many years 
younger than Miss Lucinda, but his philosophy 
had aged him. 

“ Them’s not proper Christian sentiments,” he 
answered severely, as he rose from the table; “ but 


i4 


A Poppy Garden . 


I reckon poppies ’ll set ’em right,” he added con- 
fidently. And Miss Lucinda looked after him hope- 
lessly, as he went out the door, back to his work, 
and thought, unconsciously, with Iago of Othello, 
that neither “ poppy nor mandragora, nor all the 
drowsy syrups of the world ” would bring back to 
her the happiness of yesterdays long past. 

David, however, must have been even a greater 
gardener than philosopher, or else sun, wind, and 
rain favored poppy seed, even old poppy seed, that 
year. He sowed them indiscriminately, not alone 
in one broad patch; and in July no house was ever 
more surrounded by color than Lucinda’s. The 
house stood just at the summit of the hill, and 
stretching on all sides were lovely, peaceful past- 
ure lands, green hillsides, and verdant valleys. 

Summer people who drove up there to see the 
view, for even Lanford had summer visitors, called 
it Beulah-land, and so it had come to have that 
name. That summer, people drove up more to see 
the poppy garden, for poppies had never been 
known to grow so luxuriantly in the history of man. 
There they were, single and double, white and deep 
crimson, straw-colored and faded purple, sunrise- 
pink and sunset-red. They grew into the vegeta- 
ble garden, they grew about the well, they reached 


A Poppy Garden. 


*5 

to the broken down stone-wall, and nodded all 
along the side of it; a poppy border above the 
gray stones. They spread into the grass, they ran 
backwards into the orchard, where they sowed 
themselves, or seemed to, they came up single and 
scarlet. You trod on them, and they jumped up 
again, flaunting their little red banners in your 
face — in every sense they were victorious and 
waved their small flags of victory everywhere; and 
no one was more surprised than David; and no 
one more delighted than Lucinda. Few pens could 
write the story of that poppy garden worthily, or 
tell how many it delighted that summer. City peo- 
ple, workers off for a short holiday, walked up the 
hill to look at it, and took back a vision of that 
summer apocalypse of color to brighten w'eary 
hours at desks and behind counters that coming 
winter. Middle-aged men and women, growing 
gray in the battle of life, who perhaps were visiting 
the home of their youth for the first time in many 
years, went up the hill to see the dear old house 
which had stood there when they were children, 
and to have their eyes gladdened once more by the 
sight of an old-fashioned garden. Little children, 
some merry, some more serious and proper, timidly 
knocked at the door, and asked if they might pick 


A Poppy Garden . 


16 

a flower, and went away with hands full, for the 
more you picked the more they grew. Lovers used 
to walk up there on Sundays and planned that 
when they had the little brown or red house under 
the hill-side they dreamed of, they, too, would 
have a poppy garden. And when there was a 
death in the village, and there were several that 
summer, Miss Lucinda sent a few of the white and 
more pale ones of her flowers-of-sleep to lay in 
the hands of the silent sleepers, who had passed 
to where beyond these “ earthly voices there is 
peace.” 

Its a pity the poppies themselves could not know 
how much good they did : how poor invalids, and 
old people for whom life was nearly over, crawled 
up the hill to Beulah-land to bask in the sunlight, 
and bathe themselves, as it were, in the sense of 
the richness of life and color that they gave. 

Sometimes when the wind blew, all the poppy 
heads looked like little tossing ships on seas of 
summer green. When the wind blew a gale, as it 
often did on North Street, they looked as if they 
were all running down hill as fast as they could, to 
lay themselves on the quiet graves in the Garden 
of Sleep, the village graveyard, that lay below. 
Even the country people “ set store ” by that garden 


A Poppy Garden. 


n 

though many of them had much finer gardens of 
their own ; but the poppies became most popular 
with artists, especially those of the impressionist ' 
school, there was such a chance for “ broad treat- 
ment.” They would sit from early dawn till dewy 
eve near the stone-wall, or across the street, in all 
positions, and quite motionless, to all appearances. 

That poppy garden all “ agrowin’ and ablowin’ ” 
figured in more exhibitions than one, in different 
cities during the following spring. 

There was one little water-color artist Miss Lu- 
cinda learned to love. She did not have patience 
with all of them; at least, ever since one elderly 
damsel had borrowed her clothes-horse, and then 
a little red table cloth to hang over it, because she 
said she couldn’t get the “ right atmosphere,” and 
she wanted to paint a few poppies against a solid 
ground, as she did not like things in “ masses.” 
Miss Lucinda thought if she couldn’t get “atmos- 
phere ” up there on the heights of Beulah-land she 
didn’t know where in the world she would get it, 
and told her so, indignantly. The artist had thin 
lips and a peculiar smile; she answered nothing; 
she could hardly expect appreciation of true art 
from “ provincials.” After that Miss Lucinda be- 
came a firm but unconscious advocate and disciple 


i8 


A Poppy Garden. 


of the “ broad school,” for they, at least, only asked 
for tubs of water. 

The little artist Miss Lucinda learned to love 
was very different. She was tall, somewhat pale, 
and always wore gray. She had blue eyes, with a 
tremulous expression in them, and hair of Madonna 
brown. If she had folded her white hands together 
over her breast, and lifted those baby-blue eyes to 
heaven Fra Angelico might have painted her for 
one of his saints, as she stood on the hill-top, with 
a sky almost as blue as that of Italy for a back- 
ground. There was nothing modern about her 
except her art; Hawthorne must have seen some- 
one as pure and simple when he wrote of Hilda 
in his “ Marble Faun.” She used to paint all day, 
and then go into the house and talk with Miss 
Lucinda, who enjoyed listening, though she did 
not always understand her, for she spoke of the 
garden being the garden of Persephone (she was 
from Boston), and then she quoted what Ruskin 
said about poppies : “ Wherever men are noble 
they love bright color, and wherever they can live 
healthily, bright color is given them in sky, sea, 
flowers and living creatures.” 

One evening she brought in a sketch of the old 
red house itself, which she had good naturedly 


A Poppy Garden. 


1 9 


painted for Miss Lucinda. “ I am going to-morrow, 
and I brought you something to remember me by.” 
she said, with a pretty shyness. “ Something to 
return to you all the delight I have had in Beulah- 
land, rightly named. Sometimes think of me, in 
the cramped quarter of a large city until I have 
earned enough to take another holiday — you, with 
all this lovely, free space about you (Miss Lucinda 
was thankful that she at least appreciated the atmo- 
sphere). Do you ever really think what all this 
would mean to some poor city girl who may never 
perhaps have seen the real country? Why, it seems 
to me your poppy garden might have rest and 
soothing quiet in it for some like that, which would 
last a thousand years, and would-seem like a breath 
from the immortal meadows.” The little artist 
liked to talk in the language of old fairy tales. 

Now Miss Lucinda did not know whether the 
garden of Persephone belonged to male or female, 
whether it w r as occupied by its proprietor or leased 
out in lots; and she did not care for Mr. Ruskin, 
not being intimately acquainted with him, and 
her geography was mixed about the immortal 
meadows, but after her artist friend had said “ good 
bye,” the thought of a girl somewdiere in the Hades 
of a great city whom the poppy garden might help 


20 


A Poppy Garden. 


dwelt with her, and, as she gazed at the picture of 
the old house, the only home she had ever known, 
a curious mist came over her spectacles and she 
determined within herself that hereafter it should 
be a home and a garden for some girl who was 
homeless, and, like herself, tired of working and 
living alone. 

“ Curus I ain’t a thot o’ that afore,” she said to 
herself. “ Wonder what in the old mighty Fanny 
be the matter with these spectacles, anyhow ! they’r 
gittin’ that dim I can’t see an inch afore my nose.” 

Then she looked in her table drawer for some- 
thing, and finally found a card with an address on 
it which had been given her by a lady who had once 
visited Lanford in the summer, and spoke at their 
missionary meeting, and who was a philanthropist 
“down New York way.” That very night Miss 
Lucinda wrote to her. It was a mixed up letter, all 
about an artist, poppy gardens, and homeless girls; 
but the lady understood it and wrote back that she 
had just such a girl as Miss Hardhack wanted; 
(philanthropists always do have just the right per- 
son for the right place,) and she would send her 
up to Lanford the following Saturday. 

Miss Lucinda began to be a little nervous after 
receiving such an unexpectedly prompt reply. She 


A Poppy Garden. 


21 


gave the best bedroom such an airing as it had not 
had before in years. She took down and washed 
the dimity curtains, and put them up again, tying 
them back in quite cityfied fashion with white lute- 
string ribbon, and rigged up a dimity dressing 
table, and Saturday morning carried up her water 
color painting of the house and put it on the man- 
tel shelf, then filled a glass with poppies and set 
it on the table, then flung all the windows open to 
the breeze and sunshine, and sat down to await 
results. The girl was to come by stage from Rug- 
gles, as Lanford was some miles from any railway 
station. Miss Lucinda was all excitement when 
she saw the stage turn the corner of North Street 
and struggle creaking up the hill to the house. 
She was waiting breathless at the gate when it 
stopped. The stage driver jumped from his seat, 
and handed down a pale, tired, little bit of human- 
ity in petticoats that would not cover her thinness, 
and then a small dilapidated looking hand-satchel, 
then mounted again to his seat and drove away. 

“This is Mary?” asked Miss Lucinda, tremu- 
lously. 

“ This is heaven ! ” the girl answered, looking 
beyond Miss Lucinda with wondeting eyes at 
the garden, and the green woodlands, and the 


22 A Poppy Garden. 

valley below, with its river gleaming like a silver 
thread. 

“You look so tired,” said Miss Lucinda, pity- 
ingly. She had never before in her life seen any- 
thing so pale. The girl looked like a wood anem- 
one in a March wind. 

“Come right in and I’ll put you to bed, and 
make you a cup o’ tea ” (that sovereign feminine 
remedy for all human ills.) Mary hesitated. “I 
never saw anything like this before,” she said; 
“ let me stay out here.” 

“ Come in and rest yerself first,” said Miss Lu- 
cinda, gently. “ Why, Miss Mullain wrote me as 
how you were jes gettin’ over a long spell o’ fever, 
and think what a journey you ’ve had ! ” 

Mary followed her into the house obediently 
and up into the little best bedroom under the eaves, 
where again from the windows she saw the moun- 
tains, and the landscape in all its summer glory, 
and below the poppies nodding in the grass. Poor 
Mary ! it was her first glimpse of the immortal 
meadows, and she had never, she thought, seen 
anything as white as that room before. She felt 
dazed, and could hardly take it all in at once. 
When she did, she felt a lump in her throat, the 
tears in her eyes, and when Miss Lucinda came 


A Poppy Garden . 


*3 


up with her “ drop o’ comfort ” in a large blue 
china cup, she found her lying on the bed sobbing 
out the whole heart’s compression of many stunted, 
weary years. 

She was afraid to go to sleep that night, because 
she feared she would never again hear the birds 
sing as they sang when they were going to bed in 
the twilight. There were birds under the eaves, just 
outside her window, so she did not dare to stir for 
fear of interrupting that strange, new music. Then, 
too, she had seen something so strange just before 
she heard the birds sing, at first she thought the 
whole west was on fire; and that forests and houses 
were burning, as she had seen tenements, perhaps, 
only fit for firewood, burn in the city. “ It was only 
the sun going down,” Miss Lucinda told her. “ It 
did that every night.” Mary knew it happened 
every night, but she had never been out of the city 
in her life; how could she know what a sunset 
was like in the country? Was it all a dream? she 
asked herself. Would she wake to-morrow to find 
herself back in the city, shut in between four 
squalid walls, with the noise of a hundred wheels 
always in her ears, and with hunger, for she knew 
not what, always in her heart?' Light winds came 
to her through the curtains, blowing from the 


24 


A Poppy Garden . 


mountains where the sun went down; they blew in 
odors from the poppy garden, and wafted her into 
a peaceful waking vision of delight. Slowly they 
stilled her senses — her wearied spirit to repose. 

“ What are the poppies whisp’ring to the breeze, 
Slow swaying in the silence to and fro, 

And bearing deep within their crimson hearts, 
Faint dream-like echoes of a long ago.” 

“ Oh, sleep and rest, they softly seem to say, 

The Angel Peace is wafting odors sweet, 

And summer winds are stirring ’mid our leaves, 
With gentlest kiss your wearied eyes to greet.” 

This is what the poppies whispered to Mary, on 
her first night in Beulah-land. 

Next day was Sunday. Somehow Miss Lucinda 
expected Mary would go to meeting with her, as a 
matter of course. Mary was anxious to go, too; 
but she was agitated on the subject of her cloth- 
ing. She had really only one choice, the dress she 
had come to Lanford in. It had once been hand- 
some, and rustled over a silk lining in fashionable 
drawing rooms; it had passed from the hands of 
a rich woman to those of her poorer cousin, who 
in turn, after wearing it steadily for two years, 


A Poppy Garden . 


25 

handed it over to the philanthropist, and the phi- 
lanthropist had made it over for Mary, and it still 
bore, like some ruined palazzo of the old world, 
pathetic marks of its better days. Mary was troubled 
about it, and told Miss Lucinda, who answered 
promptly that “ She’d do. The Lord would be the 
only one there who’d know her, and He always 
looked only to see how people were dressed inside.” 

Mary, who regarded the Lord as a Being far 
away, indistinct, indefinite, seated on the clouds, 
speaking in the thunders of heaven, and moving 
in earthquakes, was somewhat puzzled by the famil- 
iar, every-day way, in which Miss Lucinda constantly 
spoke of Him. Life to her had been one big ache 
from the beginning. It had been simple endurance 
from the first moment of conscious existence. It 
had no wide spaces for her to breathe in; no sun- 
lit meadows, no thrush’s song, no brilliant garden 
of waving poppies. 

“ Grim want had been her nurse, 

And sorrow was her only heritage.” 

She had seldom seen even the blue of heaven above 
her, for tall dark tenements near a place they call 
“the Bend” had shut it all out. To her winter 
meant shivering with cold; summer meant fainting 


26 


A Poppy Garden. 


with the heat. This was her limited calendar, 
bounded on all sides by physical sensations. She 
knew when she was comfortable, and the sensation 
of comfort, when she felt it, always produced in her 
profound gratitude, for it had been somewhat infre- 
quent. After all she was wiser than many people 
who never know they have been comfortable until 
they find themselves in a profoundly uncomfortable 
situation. 

Miss Lucinda walked with - slow and measured 
step up the centre aisle of the meeting-house, and 
showed her guest from New York into the large 
old-fashioned family pew. In the old days it had 
been full of Hardhacks; now Miss Lucinda sat 
there alone, representing the family. The guest 
from New York could not refrain from looking 
around her curiously, and she met many curious 
glances in return. 

The old meeting-house had been greatly altered 
within the last few years, much to Miss Lucinda’s 
sorrow. The old-fashioned three-decker pulpit, 
with its curious sounding board, had been pulled 
down, and there had been a new organ put in, “ to 
keep the young people,” to use a popular phrase. 

Miss Lucinda could remember the time when 
they had no organ, but had a violin, bass-viol, and 


A Poppy Garden. 


27 


a tuning-fork, and a solemn-looking man in a coat 
of shiny broadcloth to pompously beat time : 
when the sermons were nearly three hours long, 
and sparkled with fire and brimstone; and she felt 
such a secret dread in her childish heart of the ter- 
rible and avenging God that her anticipations of 
going to heaven when she died were anything but 
pleasant, because He was there. Those were the 
days when most of the congregation sat bolt up- 
right, stiff and starched in their Sunday clothes, 
until the last hymn, when they all, with one accord, 
rose to their feet, turned their backs on the minister, 
and faced the choir with unction. A curious piece 
of ritualism, by the way, which, if done in some 
contemporaneous Episcopal church, would have 
been supposed to savor far too much of popish form 
and ceremony, and would inevitably have scared up 
in somebody’s mind the dangerous red ghost of the 
“ Scarlet woman.” Nowadays all these things had 
gone out with the preaching of the old doctrine, 
which, though it may have made many self-right- 
eous, had also created its men of steel, of strength 
and fibre, and of courage, the courage which comes 
of strong conviction. The Gospel of Love was 
always preached now, so much so that Miss Lucinda 
thought there was danger of all becoming gospel 


28 A Poppy Garden. 

hardened through constant hearing. Salvation 
was made so very easy, and the road to heaven 
seemed “ insensate smooth.” She secretly longed 
in her heart sometimes for a regular damnation 
sermon, and a little of the old fiery fear to spur her 
on. She thought the preaching of to-day, though 
she never said so, because she knew in all these 
things she was in the minority, was too much like 
what Oliver Wendell Holmes calls “ a mere mush 
of concession”; and both she and David agreed 
that at the door of the neglect and disbelief of the 
old doctrine, terrible in its justice, stern and unre- 
lenting in its principle, lay many of the crimes, so 
greatly increased during the last half of the nine- 
teenth century, of fraud and bribery, forging and 
stealing. Poor woman ! she belonged to that class, 
who, after all, should meet with the most consid- 
eration, and who always meet with the least; those 
the fibres of whose hearts are bound inviolably to 
the past by association, and who are too old to 
grasp the new. 

The young talk of progress, but do not realize 
that, to many of a past generation, progress, even 
in a right direction, is like the passage of a Jug- 
gernaut, which to reach its end, crushes many in 
its path. What should those who have no back- 


A Poppy Garden. 


2Q 


ground, only happy spaces in life yet to be filled 
in, know of the memories of the old ? that to some 
the old meeting-house was always more peopled 
with the dead than the living on Sunday; that it 
was sometimes crowded with, to them, invisible 
faces, until the very atmosphere seemed instinct 
with voices that had long been silent; and that 
again and again some went over in their minds 
scenes of the past connected with the two great 
events of human experience : marriage, the en- 
trance into the new life of love; and death, the 
entrance into the new life of perfected love in 
heaven. 

Miss Lucinda’s father was, in his day, deacon 
for many years. To be sure, there were people still 
living mean enough to say he had been somewhat 
of a “ screw ” : a man who always tried to skin a 
cent to make it two, who would have divided the 
Garden of Eden up into building lots, if he could 
thereby have caused a real estate boom; and whose 
bumps of reverence and honor, if he had any, were 
situated somewhere down in the soles of his feet, 
constantly trampled under foot in consequence. 
But to his daughter he had always been kind, and 
she loved and revered his memory. 

Mary, gazing around her, first out of the open 


A Poppy Garden. 


30 

windows at the summer landscape, then at the 
congregation, was not troubled by past associations. 
She joined in the singing with great vigor. The 
hymns were out of the old Watts hymn book, pub- 
lished by Crocker & Brewster of Boston, in 1846, 
to the tunes of Lowell Mason. They never sang 
“damnation and the dead” kind of hymns now: 
they might as well not have been in the book at all. 
This morning they sang : 

“We are a garden walled around, 

Chosen and made peculiar ground; 

A little spot, — enclosed by grace, 

Out of the world’s wide wilderness.” 

And Mary thought only of the poppy garden, and 
the “ world wide wilderness ” from which she had 
come so recently. On coming out she was intro- 
duced to two or three people who had stared at 
her in meeting. They were a little stiff and angu- 
lar in their greeting — the Plymouth Rock in their 
natures protruding. But there was one dear old 
lady, Miss Rutgers, a friend of Miss Lucinda’s, 
who took her hand and greeted her very pleasantly. 

In four days from the day Mary came she was 
a different creature. The haunted, worn expres- 
sion had gone out of her eyes, and a little color 


A Poppy Garden. 


3i 


had come into her cheeks. On the fifth day she 
laughed for the first time, and Miss Lucinda began 
to realize that after all she was young. 

“How old are you, Mary?” she asked of her 
the day she first laughed. 

“Going on nineteen, marm,” said Mary, and 
the laugh ceased. She was thinking of those 
weary nineteen years. Miss Lucinda sighed. Her 
memory, too, went back, but farther. 

At the end of the week Miss Rutgers came in 
one afternoon, and asked them to come over to 
Crowfoot Farm, her home, to spend the afternoon 
and take tea with her the following week. This 
was an old custom of hers, to ask Miss Lucinda to 
drink tea with her every summer; and Miss Lucinda 
returned the compliment every autumn before the 
first frost. 

This was a great day in Mary’s life, for it was 
the first time she had ever been invited out to tea; 
she fairly trembled with the thought that anyone 
wanted her. Miss Lucinda was also quite animated 
with the anticipation, and pondered deeply in her 
mind the necessity of there being some additions 
to Mary’s wardrobe before she could in any way 
become a social success. There was a trunk in the 
garret which had never been opened since Miss 


A Poppy Garden. 


32 

Lucinda was twenty-five years old. It had been 
closed then, its contents being carefully folded 
away, after the death of her youngest sister, Ruth 
Hardhack, who had died at nineteen. To Miss 
Lucinda, opening it now was to cause the resur- 
rection of many ghosts which had been carefully 
imprisoned for years. She shrank from the spectres 
of her dead youth. Nevertheless, Mary was almost 
nineteen, for her light and laughter were just be- 
ginning, just where they had died away into long 
silence in that other girl’s life years ago. Why 
should not Mary have Ruth’s clothes, and the little 
girlish trinkets that she used to love? Miss Lu- 
cinda summoned up all her courage that afternoon, 
called to Mary, somewhat shortly, to follow her to 
the garret, and climbed the garret stairs with bleed- 
ing heart. Such a garret as it was ! filled with the 
accumulations of many years. There were chairs 
and tables which, if renovated, would bring their 
weight in gold in many a city antique shop; and a 
spinning wheel, on which the hemp still hung un- 
spun, as if someone had left it at a sudden call and 
had never returned, and no one had touched it 
since. In the corner, with the old rusty key still 
in the lock, lay the trunk which contained all that 
had belonged to the young, gay, fluttering, butter- 


A Poppy Garden. 33 

fly life of Ruth Hardhack, in the days when the 
old house had resounded with many voices; when 
all the Hardhacks were alive and young. 

Miss Lucinda looked old and grim in the dull 
light of the garret, as she stood there calm and 
determined; she at the head and Mary at the foot 
of this coffin of young hopes. Then with a pull 
and a push the trunk opened, and Miss Lucinda 
lifted the winding sheet, revealing to Mary’s won- 
dering eyes Ruth’s first party dress, a white delaine 
with a pattern of small sprigs of lavender, while 
in the corner peeped out of its folds two little white 
shoes. Neither spoke for some minutes. Life 
holds many pathetic sights; the simplest are some- 
times the saddest, and we doubt if there is one 
much more pathetic, to those who loved her, and 
basked in her presence, as in the everlasting sun- 
shine, than the sight of a girl’s first ball dress long 
years after she is dead. Mary stood awed, only 
half understanding it all; but Miss Lucinda was 
facing her ghosts, and they took the form of two 
white shoes, gliding noiselessly in and out the 
mazes of a dance, together with the echo of a 
girlish laugh, and the vision of how Ruth had 
looked that night, the first and last time she had 
ever worn the white delaine with its lavender flow- 


34 


A Poppy Garden. 

ers. Then she lifted it out, winding sheet and all. 
as tenderly as if she was lifting the dead, and car- 
ried it down stairs, followed silently by Mary. She 
gave the dress to the girl, and bade her put it on. 
Mary did not know what to make of it; she feared 
to touch it, it was so dainty and beautiful. Never- 
theless, she let down her brown hair, her only wealth, 
and put it up again in as becoming a way as she 
knew how, then put on the dress reverently, and 
went down stairs to be inspected. She walked to 
the sitting room, somehow knowing she was stab- 
bing someone, as she stood in the doorway waiting 
for Miss Lucinda to speak. Miss Lucinda never 
uttered a word; she only went up to Mary and 
kissed her, thinking of the little sister who had been 
lying so many years asleep, then went into her bed- 
room and shut the door. When she went to bed 
that night she thought it was not wise to put off the 
time of facing one’s ghosts. 

The white delaine .required but little alteration. 
A muslin kerchief, which also belonged to Ruth, was 
found, which covered the neck where the bodice 
was too low. A white chip hat was reconstructed 
out of one also found in the trunk, and trimmed 
simply with white satin ribbon. Miss Lucinda after- 
wards also gave her some prints for every-day wear, 


A Poppy Garden. 


35 

and some large dairy aprons with huge bibs. Mary 
thanked her with grateful eyes; she said little but 
thought much. 

David had been working since July over at Fen- 
nington, and had heard only casually of Miss Lu- 
cinda’s visitor. One day, however, he drove up to 
Beulah-land to dinner, only a few weeks before the 
county fair. Mary was standing in the doorway 
with a fresh, clean apron on over her faded calico, 
holding a bunch of scarlet poppies in her hand, 
which she had just gathered for the table. David 
looked at her curiously, and enquired for Miss 
Lucinda. Mary asked him to walk in. Lucinda 
met them in the hallway. 

“This is a friend of mine from New York, David,” 
said Miss Lucinda with a little flourish of her hand. 
David pulled a lock of his front hair and said, 
“ Pleased to meet you, marm.” Then they all went 
into the shaded kitchen where green vines grew 
over the windows, and where the table was neatly set 
for dinner, Mary placing her poppies on the table. 

“ Pears to me you’r kinder lookin’ up now, Lu- 
cindy,” said David, after dinner, as he was going. 

“Yes,” answered Miss Lucinda, gratefully, “ I’ve 
had a mighty pleasant summer, thanks to you and 
the poppies.” 


A Poppy Garden. 


3 *> 

“You say she’s from the city?” asked David, 
winking confidentially at the doorway where Mary 
had disappeared. 

“ Yes,” answered Lucinda, apursed-up look about 
her mouth, as if she was holding something back, 
and all of Solomon’s horses, to say nothing of his 
wives, couldn’t drag it out of her. 

“She don’t look like a city gal noways,” said 
David, doubtfully. “And I’ve seen plenty o’em 
summers in meetin’. They mostly look like their 
houses, block-like, presentin’ long rows of stone 
fronts. She, somehow, don’t look as if she’d quite 
bagged her emotions yet. Where did you happen 
on her, anyhow ? ” 

Miss Lucinda briefly stated the fact of her hav- 
ing written to the philanthropist. 

“Know anythin’ about her?” asked David 
again. 

“The lady as sent her told me a little of her 
story. Her life’s been a struggle; I know that 
much.” 

Well, she a’int Fatherless, nohow,” said David, 
shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, as New 
Englanders have the habit of doing when speaking 
of their deepest feelings. “ That is, unless meet- 
in’-house doctrine lies.” 


A Poppy Garden. 


37 


Miss Lucinda shuddered at the audacity of the 
implied doubt. “You’ll keep still, David, and not 
say nothin’ about the lady as sent her. I ’m intro- 
ducin’ her to all the folks as a friend o’ mine from 
New York way,” said Miss Lucinda anxiously. 

David looked at her with the scorn of a Don 
Quixote. “ I aint in the scandal mongerin’ busi- 
ness, Lucindy Hardhack. I aint arned my livin’ 
that way,” he said, briefly. 

The next time he came there was the day they 
were to take tea at Miss Rutgers. He had a bunch 
of yellow marigolds in his hand, which he gave to 
Mary, with the apology that, “ she seemed to have 
a likin’ for bright things.” Then he thought how 
prettily the sunlight shifted in through the half- 
closed blinds on her brown hair, and he noticed 
how much less pale she looked. Lucinda seemed 
to him also to have grown ten years younger during 
the summer, and he told her so. 

“Yes,” said Miss Lucinda,” “she is some one 
besides myself to live for; she is better than Dah- 
lia the cow, or Noble the cat.” 

Lucinda told David they were invited to Miss 
Rutgers that afternoon to tea. He volunteered to 
come for them at three o’clock, in Farmer Slocumb’s 
wagon, with white Bess, and himself take them to 


A Poppy Garden. 


38 

Crowfoot Farm. The afternoon was one of mingled 
delight and novelty to Mary; and white Bess was 
not, as sometimes, lazily inclined. Down the hill 
they went into the valley, up into the hills again, 
through spicy pine woods, where the birds sang all 
day in the deep, cool shade; past green pasture- 
lands, where the drowsy cows stood under the 
trees waiting for the afternoon shadows to grow 
long on the grass. Then down, down, down once 
more to where in a green and beautiful cup, as it 
were, in the hills, stood Crowfoot Farm. David 
helped Miss Lucinda out, then Mary very carefully. 
She looked very frail after all, he thought. The 
blue veins showed plainly in her forehead, and her 
little thin hands were clutched nervously together, 
for never, oh never ! in her life had she seen such a 
vista of the everlasting hills, rejoicing on every side. 
She almost gasped at the vision; but David was 
looking at her, and Miss Rutgers, who had come 
out to the gate in her best gray cashmere, her Sun- 
day gown, with ruffles in the sleeves and at the 
throat, looked at her approvingly, as she bade her 
welcome, standing there in Ruth Hardhack’s first 
party dress, and one of David’s marigolds tucked 
shyly into her belt. 

Mary did not want to go into the house; she 


A Poppy Garden. 


39 


wanted only to look at the mountains. So they left 
her standing at the bars of the pasture, Miss Rut- 
gers’ brown alderney looking at her solemnly with 
its great limpid eyes, from the other side, while 
David turned white Bess towards home, and slowly 
disappeared over the top of the hill. When Mary 
went into the house she found Miss Lucinda and 
Miss Rutgers deep in conversation, with heads close 
together, and their hands put up to their mouths. 
Miss Lucinda had been talking of Mary. 

Miss Rutgers was an exception to most of the 
Lanford people : she did more or less live in her 
parlor. Everything in it was homely and comfort- 
able, and the sunshine was allowed to pour in at its 
own free will, for the carpet was so old it had no 
pattern to fade. There were books on the center 
table: “Baxter’s Saints’ Rest,” and a ponderous 
tome, by a noted veterinary surgeon, on that noble 
animal, the horse; while in the corner cupboard 
there were cups and saucers of ancient pattern just 
matching Mary’s gown — white with lavender sprigs. 
That tea was a triumph of old fashioned cooking 
art. There were Damson plums and whipped sylla- 
bub, doughnuts and jumbles, election cake, after 
the old Connecticut recipe, and two other kinds of 
cake besides, strawberry wine, and tongue cut 


4 ° 


A Poppy Garden. 

in thin slices. Miss Rutgers presided with the 
dignity which is always requisite with the wearing 
of one’s Sunday gown, and was almost lost behind 
the height of the tea urn, which hissed away over 
a quaint alcohol lamp, as if it had a soul to save 
and was intent on saving it. It was a great, an 
almost awe inspiring event in all of their lives — 
this tea drinking. After they had finished all went 
out on the porch. The sun was setting behind the 
western hills in golden glory, while small pink 
clouds floated over the sky like damask rose leaves 
on a summer breeze. Then the shadows deepened 
in the valley, while the light still lingered on the hill 
tops; the evening star shone faintly in the heavens; 
a breeze rose out of the twilight and brought them 
pungent odors from the pine woods; the birds 
nestled in their nests and the cows stood content- 
edly in the barnyard. Nature was falling asleep 
after the long sunny day, and at last the calm still- 
ness of the summer night pervaded everything, 
until the shadows were broken by the ghostly form 
of old Bess, and the stillness by the noise of wagon 
wheels when David came to take them home. 

David himself seemed to grow younger as 
the summer days passed swiftly by. He came 
often to the little red house in Beulah-land now 


A Poppy Garden. 


41 

for it was not far from the Fair ground, where the 
men were working from early light until late at 
night preparing for the county Fair. He took 
dinner with them almost daily, and sometimes he 
would go away from the house at noon with a 
poppy in his button-hole, and the men down at 
the Fair ground laughed at him and said “ he was 
growing sentimental in his old age.” And he 
was; Diogenes was coming out of his tub; Simon 
Stylites was descending from his pillar. 

When the days of the county Fair came; when 
there were cattle shows, and exhibitions of farm 
produce; of embroidery, butter and cheese, pre- 
serves, and paintings ; when there were merry-go- 
rounds, shooting galleries, and picture galleries, 
where you could get two tintypes taken for a quar- 
ter; where there was horse-racing and testing 
matches; and when everyone had a bag of pea- 
nuts, they would as soon be without that as their 
hats, everyone wore their Sunday gowns and 
bonnets, or best suit of clothes. Mary did not like 
this gay scene half as much as the quiet days of the 
summer, nevertheless she went with Miss Lucinda 
and David to the Fair, and took some pleasure in 
looking at the patient cattle standing up against 
the back-ground of the purple September hills. 


42 


A Poppy Garden. 


On the second day of the Fair the governor came. 
He made a speech and gave out the prizes. Little 
children pointed at him, and spoke with awed 
voices, as if he were the king of all the earth, and 
pressed eagerly forward — these future citizens and 
mothers of citizens — to see the great man, and to 
find out what a governor was like. Also, strange to 
say, for the first time on record during Fair time, 
the sun shone brightly in the heavens, undimmed 
by as much as a single cloud. David was dressed 
up in a shiny new broad-cloth, and a new blue tie, 
that spite of all his endeavors and philosophic per- 
suasions, would not stay fastened until Mary with a 
little, not unbecoming, blush on her face, offered 
shyly to fasten it for him with an extra pin from her 
belt. He was most kind and devoted in his atten- 
tions to her, taking her everywhere, but it was all 
too much like the horrible city, and Mary longed 
for the quiet of Beulah-land once more. 

After the Fair David came to board at Miss 
Lucinda’s for a few weeks, and began to talk of 
buying another farm over towards Fennington, and 
go into stock raising. He had bought a horse at 
the Fair and a double seated buckboard, which he 
kept in the village, and during the autumn after- 
noons he, who had never been idle in his life be- 


A Poppy Garden. 


43 


came positively aimless, and insisted in taking 
Mary and Miss Lucinda driving all over the coun- 
try, just as if they were summer visitors; and after 
awhile Miss Lucinda always occupied the back 
seat, while Mary sat on the front seat with David; 
once or twice Miss Lucinda did not go at all. 
She was becoming a dreamer of dreams, this mat- 
ter-of-fact old woman. She was thinking out a 
romance all by herself during this clear, delightful 
weather, when the apples were growing ripe on the 
trees, and the wild grapes hung in clusters along 
the sides of the roads, and the late golden-rod hung 
its lanterns everywhere, and the sumach lighted its 
flaming torches, and the sunlight lay mellow on the 
fields where the harvests were gathered, and bright- 
ened up even their stubble into nuggets of yellow 
gold. 

Her ghosts were all “laid” in those days, and 
she no longer feared for the future. She again 
heard childish voices in the old red house, and the 
girls all looked like Mary and the boys like David. 
As for David, who certainly had had some of the 
crotchets of bachelorhood, he seemed to have 
grown marvellously contented with everything. 
He praised the cooking up to the skies, and he 
did not even complain of his bed (one of his 


44 


A Poppy Garden. 


crotchets), though on a previous occasion when 
sleeping there he had deeply offended Miss Lucinda, 
by telling her with relentless frankness that “ noth- 
ing was left of it but the oil of the goose and the 
quill of the feather.” 

One of the afternoons when they went off alone 
in the buckboard, leaving Miss Lucinda to dream 
dreams and people the house at their expense, they 
drove to what the people called “ the Holy Land,” 
where all the mountains were scriptural, and even 
the valleys bore no profane name. After reaching 
there, and driving through a mile of fern-carpeted 
woods, they came at length to the top of Mt. Tabor, 
where stood an old deserted house, guarded by two 
old pine trees, standing like aged sentinels, as if on 
gouty feet, ready to fall at the first harsh breath 
from heaven. David hitched his horse to the one 
remaining gatepost, lifted Mary out, and they stood 
for some minutes looking about them. A silence, 
as of death, reigned everywhere. The side door 
of the house stood ajar and they entered. There 
was a huge fireplace with its rusty crane and ket- 
tle, which must have held many a back log in the 
old colonial days, for this was a house with a his- 
tory; it was one of the first ones built in the set- 
tlement of the town, and was voted to go with the 


A Poppy Garden. 


4 5 

farm to the first male child born in the colony. 
The baby boy came in the springtime with the 
orioles and robins; he grew to be a man, and 
farmed the acres about the old colonial house for 
over eighty years, then joined the first settlers in 
the graveyard. Now the last direct heir had died, 
the farm had passed into other hands and the 
house on Mt. Tabor was falling to pieces. We are 
not an old country, yet there is hardly a township 
in New England identified with colonial times that 
has not one or many deserted houses. There is 
something unutterably sad about these old aban- 
doned farms and homesteads, of which sometimes 
only the great center chimney is left standing, 
or a heap of moss grown bricks and an over- 
grown pathway with lilac trees standing on either 
side of what was once the threshold of a home, 
and tiger lillies growing where was once a gate. 
Even Mary felt the influence of some of Miss 
Lucinda’s ghosts as she stood by that bleak, de- 
serted fireside, and was glad when she once more 
found herself outside in the mellow autumn sun- 
shine. Then David took her to where the garden 
had been, and perhaps the sight of that was even 
more sad, for it was enclosed between four stone 
walls, which were lined with blighted quince trees 


4b 


A Poppy Garden. 


and tangled rose bushes and prim plum and crab- 
apple trees planted in rows, and in one corner was 
a broken sundial, and on the other side what was 
once a garden of sweet herbs. Here was where 
the wife 6f the first male heir of the settlement 
used to take her airing at the close of day. And 
yet there are many Americans to be found who will 
tell you our country has no history. They say they 
prefer old, even decaying, civilizations, and do not 
recognize that they, too, had their crude beginnings, 
and were developed only through struggle, hard- 
ship, and battle; that as the blood of the martyrs is 
the seed of the Church, so the blood of patriots is 
always the seed of all great nations; and that 
where there has been life and honor, love of home 
and loyalty to country, and courage and strength, 
no country, no matter how young, is without a 
history — no history no matter how short is lack- 
ing in romance. David picked a straggling bit of 
lavender from the old herb garden and gave it to 
Mary, and then they passed out of my lady’s gar- 
den and onward up to the summit of the hill. 

Mary by this time ought to have been used to 
views, for she lived on a hill-top herself, but she 
never seemed to. Whether it is as Lamartine 
wrote long ago, that God reveals himself more on 


A Poppy Garden. 


4 7 


the hill-tops, and that “ more peace, light, and 
serenity are to be found in proportion as we leave 
the valleys where men swarm and rise towards the 
heights where their din ceases,” it would be hard 
to say, but anyway, more than ever before, as she 
stood there on the mount of visions, her cramped, 
sad city life seemed to become an ugly dream in 
the back-ground, and her whole nature expanded 
and went out in responsiveness to the wide expan- 
sion of nature about her. In those moments her 
. imprisoned spirit awakened and claimed all the 
spiritual, possibilities of the future. When she 
followed David down the steep pathway from Mt. 
Tabor, a different Mary went down from the Mary 
who went up; the past was forgotten, the future 
was irradiated. She went back to Beulah-land to 
small duties and small pleasures, seeing in them 
golden opportunities. It had indeed been her 
Mount of Transfiguration. 

That was the first of many days which seemed to 
hold in their grasp all the perfume and brightness of 
summer with all the garnered treasures of autumn. 

Mary lived in the open air; and every afternoon 
she and David, sometimes with Miss Lucinda, 
would drive to some old deserted home, look 
through gaunt, sad windows which missed the 


/f.8 A Poppy Garden. 

human faces which used to look through them. 
They picked apples from trees in deserted orchards, 
spite of feeble reminders of the eighth Command- 
ment on the part of Miss Lucinda. And they 
drank water from the springs by the wayside. One 
afternoon they drove to Lombardy, a deserted hill- 
village. Twenty years before a railroad had been 
built in the valley and the inhabitants of the town- 
ship had moved and founded a new town on its 
line. The meeting-house stood on the summit of 
the hill, almost in ruins, surrounded by ragged 
Lombardy poplars. Next to it was the town hall, 
its windows boarded up; and on the other side 
what was once the post-office and country store. 

There was only one street, straggling and old- 
fashioned, running straight through the town, bor- 
dered on either side by houses in various stages of 
dissolution. The meeting-house bell never rang 
out on Sundays, and the ragged squatters in two 
of the best preserved houses were the sole inhabi- 
tants. Lombardy poplars (the town was named 
for them) everywhere stood out like great excla- 
mation points against the sky. It was like a New 
England Pompeii, it was so silent, but lacked the 
friendly burial of dust and ashes. David during' 
these exploring trips used to tell stories and talk 


A Poppy Garden. 


49 


philosophy, and even Mary was startled out of her 
reserve and talked of the city, and of the brighter 
side of her old life, until David for the first time 
in his life began to grow restless, and wanted to 
see that howling wilderness of New York for him- 
self. It was a phenomenal season — Mary’s first 
summer and autumn in the country. All the fruit 
ripened on the vines, and the pumpkins rejoiced 
in the fields till late in the year, undisturbed by 
frost. Indian summer lasted into December, and 
until Christmas they had no snow, even on the 
mountains. 

With the beginning of the new year, David Hard- 
hack actually started for New York, to take a posi- 
tion, he said, for a few months, and to see the 
world. Mary and Miss Lucinda settled down to 
hibernate till springtime; Mary with a curious 
feeling in her heart that she could not understand. 

David came back in April, when the water ran 
in glistening pools along the sides of the roads, 
and the world was growing green and dancing with 
glad steps to the songs of returning birds. He 
looked old and anxious, saying little about the city, 
except that it was not the country. He made no 
more philosophic remarks, for he had lost the 
happy self-confidence that comes of simple igno- 


50 


A Poppy Garden. 


ranee. He worked away at the farm and garaen in 
Beulah-land, and promised Miss Lucinda even hap- 
pier results than those of the previous summer. 
After a few weeks he seemed more like the old David 
who had gone away at the beginning of the new 
year. The sight and air of the mountains, and the 
smiling country were healing the wounds of the 
city; yet he was more quiet, more yielding in his 
opinions, and less caustic in his speech. He and 
Mary looked at one another shyly, for they were 
finding out a secret, part of the harvest of a pre- 
vious autumn. Mary stayed in the house now 
with Miss Lucinda, and David did not propose any 
more drives in the buckboard; but when the 
spring fairly burst upon them, with all the mature 
beauty of May; when the whole air was filled with 
the odor of blossoms, and the valley below them 
looked like one vast garden ; while the sun seemed 
to woo vines or green leaves from the barren rocks 
themselves, Mary would spend whole afternoons 
in the meadows and woods, walking as if she had 
seen a great vision ; and David developed a liking 
for poetry, reading it evenings by the yard. 

Miss Lucinda thought David was getting very 
careful about his dress — in many ways she liked 
him much better since his return from New York. 


A Poppy Garden. 


5 * 

Sometimes David would venture to read poetry to 
them evenings, and by the time the poppies were 
all again in bloom in Beulah-land, he and Mary 
were again great friends, reading at the front door 
till late twilight, sometimes out of the same book, 
while Miss Lucinda sat inside knitting, and think- 
ing how lonely she had been a year ago, and dream- 
ing dreams. One night she actually heard David 
read “ one o’ ’em love songs ” with tears in his 
voice. 

“ Poppies low bending,” 

he began shifting his feet uneasily : 

“ Low-bending your scarlet heads, 

Saw ye my True Love pass? 

Heard ye the music of tiny feet 
Treading the waving grass? 

Caught ye the echo of some sweet song, 
Floating adown the plain, 

Laden with hope that the tender words 
Live in my heart again?” 

And all the poppies in the garden nodded their 
heads significantly, and Mary sat there on the door- 
step near David, the flush of sunset on her face. 

“ Like that, Mary? ” asked David. 


52 


A Poppy Garden . 


“ Real pretty, David,” answered Mary. 

That was all they said, but their feet from that 
time began to tread the old time pathway, in that 
ever new world where all the trees are trees of 
happy life, and where all the rivers flow onward 
towards the sea of Infinite Hope. 

Miss Lucinda saw it, and did all she could to 
help them, for she, too, had once begun to tread 
the same pathway, though her trees had borne no 
blossoms, and her rivers had dried up before they 
reached the sea. 

One afternoon in midsummer, when Mary had 
gone out to the garden to pick some flowers for 
the ginger jars in the parlor, David met her, and 
then and there, right in the middle, near the potato 
patch, where everyone in passing could see them 
from the road, he actually kissed her, and she did 
not resent it. Then they went hand in hand into 
the house, David singing 

“ Poppies low-bending your scarlet heads, 
Saw ye my True Love pass? ” 

to tell Miss Lucinda. 

The dreamer of dreams only said, “ Bless you, 
my children.” It was all arranged to her satisfac- 


A Poppy Garden. yj 

tion, for when they were married they were to live 
with her, and David was to run the farm. 

One day, the earliest of those lingering, dreamy 
days of what the English call St. Martin’s sum- 
mer, David and Mary walked side by side down 
the street to the old meeting-house. She in a 
white dimity gown, with the last of the white pop- 
pies at her throat and in her hair, and were mar- 
ried by the old minister, with only two or three 
witnesses besides Miss Lucinda and Miss Rutgers. 
It was a new thing for anyone to be married in the 
meeting-house; it was not a Lanford custom, and 
Miss Lucinda did not quite know whether it was 
just the thing, but Mary, ordinarily so docile, car- 
ried the day with irresistible logic. 

“ She had never known but one Father,” she 
said simply, “ and she wished to be married from 
her Father’s house.” 

That afternoon David and Mary took a long 
walk together. That was their only bridal tour, 
but they were just as happy as if it had been longer. 
They did not say much, for the deepest sympathy 
requires no outward expression. Hand in hand 
they walked down a shaded road — their bridal 
path — strewn with the yellow and red leaves of 
autumn, to the wedding march of a babbling moun- 


54 


A Poppy Garden. 


tain brook. They gathered flowers by the way- 
side, and came home on purpose by the “ Garden 
of Sleep ” in the valley, that they might lay them 
on the grave of David’s mother. They saw a glo- 
rious sunset through an opening in the grove of 
ancient pines in front of the meeting-house, then 
went home in the gloaming, up through the front 
walk between the poppies, which nodded their 
heads in welcome. 

Of course some people gossiped about Mary. 
None of them knew where she came from, and 
none of them knew who she was, and she was the 
last to assert herself. Hers was a character like 
calm moonlight falling upon placid water, drawing 
all its light and strength from the sun ; her strength 
came from something stronger than herself. After 
awhile she, however, by many a kindness and gentle 
thoughtfulness, made her own quiet place in the 
hearts of the people, and when strangers in later 
years asked David, as they sometimes did, where he 
had found his dear wife, he always answered, with 
fond laughter in his eyes : “ I found her in a poppy 
garden in Beulah-land.” 
























































































































































































































































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